


We're all in the gutter, but some of us leave the water around here sparkling

by TheSingerThatYouWanted (orphan_account)



Category: British Comedy RPF, The Mighty Boosh (TV), The Mighty Boosh RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4547202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheSingerThatYouWanted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't really have a whole plot to summarise yet, I'm sorry. Apparently strange, badly-written AUs are just my calling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're all in the gutter, but some of us leave the water around here sparkling

**Author's Note:**

> I have two reasons for how insecure I am with the state of this as an opening chapter to a fic, especially with the dialogue and the ending. The first one is that it's set in Victorian times and I tend to struggle with finding a balance between the formal writing style associated with that time period and the more modern, familiar style of conversation I associate with the people who I have roped in to becoming characters here. The second excuse is that it's nearly 4am, I haven't really slept properly for about two weeks, and I haven't written anything substantial in at least a month. Please be gentle with me.

Rain was pattering down gently onto the cobbled streets, tiny rivulets of clear water turning muddy and brown as they raced through the cracks between the stones. The turn in the weather wasn’t quite enough to drive out the terrible smog that always hung over the city, but it had been enough to send most of its more respectable inhabitants scurrying indoors in search of a hot meal and a roaring fire. Not here, though. Here you could see shadowy figures darting from house to house, perhaps seeking shelter or perhaps, knowing this part of town, trying to find a way in for their own equally shadowy purposes. If you stood still and listened, however, you might just hear someone singing.

The source of the singing was a grubby young ragamuffin, well known to those who travelled in the back alleys and narrow mazes that made up a large part of that great, sprawling city. His age was uncertain, his real name more so, though he usually went by Noel. No surname necessary. Most people knew him as a troublemaker, a hooligan, a gal-sneaker, a pickpocket, and he wore all those names with pride, draping them across his shoulders like the patchwork of clothes he was never seen without. He liked to think that his name was never spoken unaccompanied by either a knowing wink or a muttered curse, but there was no way of proving it either way. Nonetheless, most of those who associated with London’s less desirable classes knew him, though none knew anything much about him. He liked it that way. It made him feel important.

On that particular evening Noel was in a remarkably good mood. He’d managed to snag a couple of shirts off a washing line and traded one up for a couple of coins and a swig of cheap beer. The other he shrugged on instantly, enjoying the way it matched the waistcoat he’d found the previous week. All in all, the day was going well. That was the thing about him and the people he associated with; their day had no boundaries. There was no set morning and evening for them. They rose when they liked and walked where they pleased, and to hell with anyone who stood in their way.

Of course, there were the occasional murders. But other than that, Noel thought he had it pretty good.

The song he was singing was one of his favourites. He’d picked it up at one of the high-end music halls on one of the rare occasions he had the time to drop by, pretending to work there for just long enough to see the show. He enjoyed it there. Not like the dirty old men in the back rows enjoyed it, with their immaculate clothes and rotten tongues, but with a true, childlike excitement. It was the only place he’d ever been that sparkled. The dances usually interested him more than the women performing them, and he would stare in fascination as their carefully ruffled dresses swung and glittered and caught the light.

Sometimes he could get backstage after the show, a cheeky wink and confident grin getting him further than most people would have guessed, and he’d got to know a few of the girls quite well. They would slip him the cut-off ends of their dresses to tie around his wrists, hand him stray feathers for his battered top hat and sprinkle a little of their glitter over him as he left. In exchange he would tell them stories, spinning out exaggerated tales of people he knew and people he’d imagined. He’d always had a knack for storytelling. Urban legends and half-truths came to life in his words, painting a picture of his world for the spellbound listeners. He never felt bad about adding a twist of fantasy to the tales, because he’d lived in London long enough to know that no matter how strange his stories got there would always be a truth to rival them.

The rain trickling down his hat washed away the last of the glitter as Noel walked through the streets, but the song remained the same. He sauntered on, no clear goal in mind, just enjoying the feeling of the city beneath his boots. They had, like the rest of his clothes, been worn by at least five people before he’d acquired them, and the soles were as thin as paper. The cobbles he was standing on were smooth and worn, and sometimes he fancied he could read the city through them; read the paths of the people who walked through these alleys, trace the routes most popular and watch the roads less travelled.

On this particular night, like on so many others, his boots were taking him to his favourite pub. He wasn’t much of a drinker, or much of a gambler, but for reasons even he could never be certain of he seemed to spend almost all of the little money he could scrape up on the long evenings he spent down there. The bartender- an old friend of his- always used to laugh when he complained, telling him that if he wanted to keep some coins in his pocket at the end of the day he should learn to stop giving them out to every kid who stumbled through the doors with a musical instrument and a smart mouth claiming to be an entertainer. They’d had the same discussion hundreds of times, familiar background noise for the evenings when the bar was almost empty and Noel was grinning optimistically at his friend behind the wooden countertop, doing his best to talk another drink out of him. This, with the rain still pattering down outside, was a perfect example of one such night.

“There’s got to be a whole gang of them out there now,” chuckled the bartender, wiping down a glass and shaking his head. “Just waiting, passing the broken violin around and trying to decide which of them gets to come and empty your pockets tonight.”

Noel grinned, making an odd movement with his head that was equal parts self-deprecating nod and attempt to subtly indicate the barrel of beer at the rear of the room. The bartender pointedly ignored the latter part of the gesture.

“Alright, I take your point, but one of these days I bet there’s gonna be some kid out there giving me tickets to his first show on the stage as he heads off to become the greatest pianist in the country, an’ you know what I'm gonna tell him?”

“What are you gonna tell him, Noel? I’m intrigued. Please, do share these wonderful insights with me.”

“I’m gonna tell him that he can charge me whatever he wants for tickets so long as when he sees a big beardy bloke called Phil he promises to charge him exactly two cold beers.”

Phil laughed, nodding slowly.

“And that’s the only way you’re ever going to get a free drink off of me.”

Noel sighed, slumping slightly.

“Ah, go on, mate. You know I’m broke, and I've not had anything all day. D’you want me out there drinking water? One of my friends did that last week and he was so ill he started hallucinating. Had elephants coming out of his ears an’ everything. They’d started Morris dancing across his toes by the time someone managed to get a pint down him. Weirdest thing was, he’d never even seen an elephant, so he just thought they were the biggest mice he’d ever seen and that some of them had just put their tails on backwards by mistake.”

Phil stared at him for a moment before breaking into laughter again, looking down.

“One day I’ll find out what goes on in your head.”

“Really? Genius, let me know when you work it out, will you?”

He spun on the polished wood of the barstool before continuing, lounging as best he could on what was, realistically, little more   
than a glorified crate.

“Come on then. You’re not gonna give me a drink, yet again, so how are you going to make this bar worth my time?”

“Easy,” snorted Phil. “None of the others will have you in.”

Noel made a rude gesture and tried to hide his laugh.

“Shut up. Give me gossip, Phil, give me stories.”

“Delia getting demanding again, is she?”

A laugh, loud and clear in the empty bar.

“Ain’t she always? C’mon, mate, I know you’ve got something.”

Grin tugging at his lips, Phil looked around furtively and beckoned Noel closer with one finger.

“Alright. If it’ll keep you off my back about this free drink fantasy of yours, I might have an idea about how you can get some spare cash. That way you can go and see your girl more often. Will that do?”

Noel swung his feet round so he was facing the barman properly, a sharp-toothed grin on his face.

“It might. What is it?”

“Not much, but I had a couple of guys in earlier and one of them was a hearse driver. I overheard him saying that some rich bloke’s died. And I’m talking properly rich, gold rings and everything. Funeral was this afternoon, so he’s fresh off the wagon.”

“Or, in his case, the big ornate four horse carriage?”

“Right.”

Phil pointed a finger more or less randomly to emphasise the point.

“If you can get to his grave before anyone else does, nick a couple of rings or something, that’s you sorted for money for about three months.”

A grimace flitted across Noel’s face at the suggestion.

“Grave robbing? Seriously?”

“You’ve stolen your fair share of shiny trinkets before,” replied Phil with a shrug. “Don’t see why it should make so much difference if they’re dead.”

“Yeah, but what kind of respect for the dead is that? ‘Alright mate, sorry about this, hail Mary, ashes to ashes and all that, but if you’ve got any spare change it’d be genius’? Is that what you think I am?”

“Look, it’s not like I'm saying you should sell the corpse to some quack and then jump on the bits they didn’t want for experimenting on. I'm just saying that you’d have done this if he was alive, wouldn’t you?”

Noel’s expression turned sheepish.

“Yeah, alright. So?”

“So, this is just you catching up. Making up for the times you might’ve walked past him in the street, not paying enough attention to grab his wallet as you went. It’s the same trick. And if you pull it off you might actually be able to pay for a drink for once, which would make a nice change for me.”

There was a short pause as Noel considered this, in which he would have sipped his drink pensively had he been able to coax one out of Phil. After a few seconds he nodded.

“I’ll do it, but only if it’s on my way home,” he said, a tense note to his humour suggesting that he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to take that chance. Phil nodded his agreement.

“Seems fair enough. Funeral was up at Highgate Cemetery, I think he said.”

Noel was silent for a second.

“Alright,” he said at last, then after another short pause he added-

“Fuck.”

~*~

The rain seemed to have found its footing by the time Noel had made the journey through the intricate maze of streets and alleys that would usually take him home, and was cheerfully pouring down. Before he’d left the bar Phil had taken pity on him and given him a shovel and a drink of something green that smelled faintly of apples and slightly more strongly of tar. The latter had quickly made its way to his head, which had subsequently decided it wasn’t up to much more than keeping the former clutched tightly in his right hand. He’d walked to the cemetery without paying any attention to where he was going, his feet finding the well-worn path as easily as his lungs could normally keep him breathing.

Normally. Because now, standing outside the gates which seemed so much more imposing at night, it was taking almost all of the concentration he had left to remember to breathe.

“Alright,” he muttered to himself. The sound of his voice seemed strangely alien to him, foreign, a living being unwelcome in the world of the dead. Swallowing down the lump in his throat he looked around, trying to figure out what his next move should be.

First step, he decided, was to check on the poor sod who had been landed with the graveyard shift that night. As he’d expected- and desperately hoped- the man was asleep. Probably trained to wake up for bells, thought Noel, bells and little scratching noises. That was allegedly the point of the whole night watch nonsense, though with grave robberies on the rise he guessed it was probably more often more a matter either of accepting bribes left right and centre or of sleeping more soundly than they’d let on in the job interview. He hoped it was the latter. He wouldn’t be doing this if he had the cash to spare for a bribe.

Guard out of the way, then. Next obstacle was finding the grave, but he wasn’t so worried about that. All the posh people tended to be buried in the same patch of dirt, maintaining some kind of ludicrous class divide even in death.

Something he’d heard a kid at the pub say the previous week floated across his mind, furious muttering over a pint of something that was more or less just horse piss as he mourned the death of his best friend. A servant crushed beneath the wheels of some Lady’s carriage as her chauffeur pulled away too soon one morning.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but it’s them with them and it’s us with us.”

Noel shuddered and pushed the thoughts aside, trying to ignore the creeping feeling of dread curling at the base of his spine as he imagined how many of that lady’s family could be buried beneath his feet. How many servants. Then again, there was some small part of his brain which was grateful for the thoughts. They drowned out his memories of the ghost stories he’d heard about the place.

And there was the fresh mound of earth his eyes had been scanning the ground for. Sucking in a deep breath he took out his spade and started to dig, heaving as much dirt as he could out of the hole with each shovelful. Get in, grab something that sparkles, then toss some soil and apologies back into the pit and leg it home and do his best to forget it had ever happened. That was the plan. He’d worked hard on it on his way out of the pub, straining every faculty of a brain that was utterly intoxicated on a mixture of strong unidentifiable alcohol and pure, gut-wrenching fear.

His shovel hit wood.

Cautiously, holding his breath as he did so, Noel slipped the shovel under the lid of the coffin and pried it open. As the wood gave way, nails tearing from the sides, he heard a frantic, desperate gasp for breath. A strangled yelp tore from his own throat as he tried to back away, tripping and falling sideways onto the wet grass. For a few precious moments the wind was knocked out of him, the wet grass cold against his face as he struggled for breath and listened to someone- something- behind him doing the same. Wiping slippery dirt from his hair and hat, breathing in the thick, earthy smell, he forced himself to look back into the grave.

Two small eyes peered back at him from beneath a crumpled, scruffy fringe that no amount of effort on the mortician’s part had managed to coax into any recognisable style. They looked worried.

“Don’t kill me,” the corpse said quietly. “I’ve got so much to give.”

And Noel laughed. What alternative did he have? Because he really was short on money, and Delia really did say she sometimes wished he could come to her shows more often in a way that actually let him sit in the front row instead of skulking at the back hoping nobody noticed that he didn’t actually work there, and maybe he had got desperate enough to drink water out of the communal pump. It was the most logical explanation he could think of for why he appeared to have encountered a ghost, and the ghost seemed to be the one who was terrified of him. In his bewildered state- Phil would probably have joked about him being hysterical, maybe offered him smelling salts- he said what seemed to be the most logical thing.

“D’you need a hand up?”

The man looked at him in confusion, and Noel took the opportunity to give him a quick look over. He was a couple of inches taller than Noel, with a dark fuzz on his lip that he optimistically- and a little giddily- decided to call a moustache. It wasn’t much, especially compared to some of the elegantly waxed creations he’d seen hiding in the shadows of the music halls, but it suited him.

“You’re not going to hurt me?” he asked, cautiously accepting the hand Noel had reached out to him. Noel shrugged.

“Don’t see any reason to. If you could just give me anything valuable you’ve got on your person then that’s all I want. Oh, and your name. I know this girl, see, dances at the music hall, and she loves stories. Reckon this’ll be funnier if I tell her your name.”

He was impressed by the steadiness in his own voice, for once in his life his reeling mind concealed by a calm, if unusually pointy, facial expression. The stranger- he was too sweaty and nervous to be a ghost- looked at him in panic.

“Don’t leave! How do I- where am I?”

“Highgate Cemetery.”

“How do I get home from here?”

Noel laughed.

“Where’s home?”

The taller man rattled off an address, lightning quick, and Noel blinked.

“Not following. Sounds posh.”

He paused for a moment, peering intently at the ex-corpse. Something was ringing a faint bell, perhaps something in his voice, something in his bearing, something in the name written on the strangely modest tombstone behind him…

“Is your name Barratt?” he asked abruptly. The man nodded, looking uncomfortable.

“Yes. Julian Barratt,” he said, and suddenly Noel could see the familiar facial structure shining through beneath the terrible haircut, pretend moustache and overbearing twitchiness.

“What, Lord Barratt’s kid?” he said incredulously. Lord Barratt was- or at least had been- a bit of a shady character, hiding prostitution rings and drug dens beneath a façade of honest business. All London knew him. The upper classes liked him, everyone else feared him. When he’d died a few years previously it had been a relief. Hardly anyone remembered he even had a son. It hadn’t exactly been widely advertised.

Looking even more uncomfortable than before, Julian nodded. A slow grin spread across Noel’s face.

“Alright. Five pounds and that gold ring, I’ll walk you home.”

A look of relief swept across Julian’s face, only to be dimmed a moment later when Noel added “Make it ten and I won’t even tell my girl about it.”

“Ten pounds?”

“I could just leave,” threatened Noel, though his heart wasn’t in it. Leaving the man alone in the dark would be like kicking a puppy- perhaps necessary, in the fight for food on the streets, but distasteful nonetheless. He was oddly relieved when Julian replied.

“No! I’ll just need to get home before I can pay you. They don’t tend to… to bury people… with that kind of money on their person.”

He swallowed thickly, looking faintly green, and Noel had seen enough drunkards to know to step smartly back just in time to avoid the vomit which spattered the inside of the coffin.

He gripped Julian firmly by the elbow and steered him away from the freshly dug grave before the taller man had too much time to process what he’d just done. Throwing up in your own grave can’t be a pretty sight for anyone.

“Suits us both, then,” he muttered. “Come on. After tonight, I really, really could use the kind of drink that amount of money could buy me.”

**Author's Note:**

> The usual deal. I own none of these people and am in no way implying that any of these events really took place. All I'm saying is- wouldn't it have been fun if they did?  
> Please comment, I promise I'll love you even if you tell me it's shit. Just phrase it nicely.


End file.
